This
kid is different, Tom!” said Diane, whom Tom Balkany
had recently married. “He is smart but nobody knows it.” Diane
was trying with all her heart and expertise to make a difference
for kids who were then labeled “retarded.” For
Max, the world was quite organized and reasonably structured.
But
he never had a chance to get a reference, a benchmark to consolidate
or remodel the world he had created for himself. That is because
he could never ask and could never appreciate what the people
around him were saying, even the very patient, kind ones. He
had never been able to hear anything. He did not know that
was unusual. And nobody knew he was deaf.

That is what Diane and Tom, then an eager and
already passionate medical student, discovered when they brought
Max to the audiology
section of the Department of Otolaryngology. That was also
the day Tom discovered that his favorite discipline of medicine
would
be otolaryngology, or ear, nose, and throat (ENT), a field
that specializes in critical functions that make humans human—hearing,
speaking, tasting, eating, and swallowing—and also disorders
spanning a large spectrum of severity, from snoring and ear aches
to facial reconstruction and removal of tumors of the vocal cords.

The one piece of this discipline that Tom found
particularly fascinating was hearing—the way sound waves are channeled
to the tympanic membranes, perceived, registered, processed,
and carried as electrical energy to refined domains of the human
brain. Tom had developed an unusual level of understanding of
each step in the complex process of hearing. He rapidly developed
unmatched expertise in the surgical procedures aimed at restoring
a functional hearing apparatus, as well as in diagnostic and
other clinical and scientific layers of the discipline.

When devices were conceptualized to replace
missing functional elements in the ear, Tom was at the cutting
edge. He could virtually
construct an ear machine out of coils, electrodes, and copper
wires coated with silicone. Step by step, devices progressed
to become adequate to allow most patients to at least understand
the speech of loved ones and colleagues. Rising through the
ranks, Tom came to the Miller School with the drive to build
the best
ENT department in the country. Carrying his good looks with
a form of nonchalance, what is striking about Tom is his mix
of
intelligence and kindness; he is a real “mensch” (a
good man).

He tells the story of a patient who could not
hear a sound and was provided with one of the early prototypes
for a cochlear
implant (the electronic implantable device that restores hearing
for most deaf patients). At that time, the device was improvised
in the operating room. The patient, Mike, was a busy entrepreneur
and politician. His wife, Claire, was not only the love of
his life, she was also the interpreter or, more specifically,
the
intelligence that allowed him to communicate with and understand
the world around him. One day, Mike heard Claire’s voice
for the first time. He loved her even more. Life is not always
fair, and for Mike, whose courage and determination were unsurpassed,
the story has it that a brain tumor destroyed his ability to
speak. From deafness to speechlessness, this extraordinary communicator
faced all the hurdles. Eventually, the tumor took his life, while
he was listening to the angelic voice of Claire. To this day,
tears still well up in Tom’s eyes when he recalls the story
of his friend Mike.

Amina was a young Iraqi girl who at age 3 had
never heard the voice of her mom and dad. A member of our military,
Col. Warner
Anderson, noticed that she was unfazed by gunshots and other
battle noises. Col. Anderson’s wife had heard of Tom Balkany
and his team and contacted him. With the invaluable help of the
International Kids Fund, little Amina traveled to UM/Jackson
and received cochlear implants, and a world of new sounds reached
her young brain for the first time. She went back home to Iraq
with all the necessary orange and green UM memorabilia and warm
feelings about the U.S.A. A true ambassador, she spreads the
message that in America we can make miracles happen—particularly
Tom Balkany.

But of course, Tom would be the first one to
say that teamwork is what makes true medical breakthroughs
happen. As chair of
the Department of Otolaryngology, he has assembled an outstanding
team of physicians, audiologists, nurses, and staff. The team
was recently ranked in the top 20 in the U.S. for its amazing
clinical and scientific reputation and accomplishments.

It is instructive to note that the other “top 20” medical
discipline at UM is ophthalmology, eye disorders. Actually,
ophthalmology is No. 1 in the rankings. The Bascom Palmer Eye
Institute founded
by Ed Norton is known as the premier eye center in the U.S.

ENT and ophthalmology deal with the two senses
that make humans human: hearing and vision. Why such emphasis
on human senses
in Miami? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that we are in
the most exciting city in the world. Perhaps at the edge of
the Florida
Peninsula, where light is powerful and so many languages are
spoken, hearing and vision are lifesaving and beyond the shadow
of a doubt critical to quality of life.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Partitas
for Violin” are
playing, reminding us of the gift of hearing and those who
so diligently, like Tom Balkany and his extraordinary team,
protect
it, repair it, or replace it, whatever the need may be.